North Carolina gambles on Bobby Petrino's explosive offense, risking a history of volatile tenures for much-needed yardage. Will this be a touchdown or a fumble?
North Carolina Is Rolling The Dice By Hiring Bobby Petrino.
There's a lot that can be said about the first 12 months of the Bill Belichick experience in Chapel Hill. Uninteresting isn't one of those things.
The Tar Heels have now reportedly hired Bobby Petrino to be their new offensive coordinator. He will replace Freddie Kitchens, who was promoted to the position last year after he served as Mack Brown's tight ends coach.
Similar to Belichick's hire, the Petrino news has been polarizing in college football. There are some who think he could be exactly what UNC's offense needs and many others that are troubled by the decision.
The case for Petrino is that his offenses — for multiple decades — have always seemed to churn out significant yardage. Last season at Arkansas, his Razorbacks ranked 18th nationally in total offense by averaging 454 yards per game. In 2024, Arkansas finished 10th with an average of 459 yards per game.
If you juxtapose that with this season's Tar Heels, you'll notice a stark contrast. UNC ranked 131 out 136 FBS teams with just 288 yards per game.
The concern with Petrino is that he has been one of the most nomadic coaches in college football this century. UNC will be the seventh college program he has worked for since 2013 alone. That includes head coaching stops at Western Kentucky, Louisville, Missouri State and Arkansas (on an interim basis).
Then, of course, there are the memorable ways a few of his coaching tenures ended.
In 2007, Petrino's first tour of duty at Louisville ended with him accepting the Atlanta Falcons job less than six months after agreeing to a 10-year contract with the school. In December of that year, Petrino resigned with the Falcons — with three games remaining in the regular season — in order to return to the college game at Arkansas.
This brings us to Petrino's most unceremonious exit, which involves a motorcycle crash with a former Arkansas volleyball player he was having an affair with. He was fired in 2012.
Here's to hoping Petrino's offense with the Tar Heels mirror the production he had in Fayetteville the last couple of seasons and that his tenure lasts longer — and is less eventful — than some of his past stops.